Thomas Lee was quoted in a Law360 article about the Supreme Court’s decision in McDonnell v. United States.
Thomas H. Lee, Fordham Law School
“The Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice [John] Roberts, vacated the corruption conviction of former Gov. McDonnell. The court’s basic point was that the trial court had wrongly refused to instruct the jury that McDonnell had to have committed — or agreed to commit — an ‘official act’ for a loan or gift, and things like making phone calls or setting up get-to-know-you lunches or meetings with other state officials to help the gift-giver aren’t ‘official acts’ as defined by the statute. The federal prosecutors will have to decide whether to reattempt a prosecution with the narrower definition of ‘official act.’ My guess is that they will not, because the way that Roberts’ opinion goes over the facts suggests McDonnell and his staff was very cagey about not actually delivering a quid pro quo. In bigger, societal terms, the decision reflects the influence of bipartisan arguments made by a number of high-level Democratic and Republican government officials that prosecutions of this sort would severely impact the political process. It also reaffirms the unchallenged primacy of the narrow ‘quid pro quo’ definition of corruption as a legal concept in the criminal prosecution context, despite its controversiality in the campaign contribution context after Citizens United.”
